Book reviews

摘要

Learn Prolog Now! stands out in two respects: the targeted audience and the style of the authors. The book is written for non-experts, with the aim to get them interested, even enthusiastic about programming in Prolog. The authors certainly succeed in transferring their own appreciation of the Prolog language to the reader. And they let the reader play the main role in this book: the reader is encouraged strongly to participate actively in the journey through a sequence of interesting first Prolog experiences. The pace of the book is slow so nobody gets lost during that journey, and with only 265 pages, it cannot visit all interesting Prolog places. In fact, it just scratches the surface of Prolog programming. The book is really self-contained and it feels like a self-study book: both were intended by the authors. It is freely available on-line as well, but this review is based mostly on the first edition of the paperback version. Having an on-line version is very nice, but its usefulness would increase if it were keyword searchable. It is indeed a real challenge to find out from the on-line version where e.g. infix operator is mentioned for the first time. There is also an on-line errata list, but it is certainly not complete or up to date: any discrepancies between the book, the on-line version and that errata list are annoying.